Connecting students to school-based healthcare
Client - The School Based Clinic at Roosevelt High School
Roosevelt High School’s clinic seeks to eliminate barriers to care for students by providing accessible physical and mental health care services.
Deliverables
Prototype
Information Architecture
Methods:
User interviews
Survey
Competitor audit
Tools:
Figma
Whimsical
Project Overview
My proposed solution is Health-E, an app that empowers young adults to learn how to take agency over their healthcare
The Challenge:
Much of Roosevelt’s student body is dependent on the health care resources provided at the school. However, the Minneapolis School Based Clinic has more students with health needs than they can realistically support.
High-level goals:
Facilitating their access to critical medical information and their ability to take point on maintaining their care
Empowering them to take control of appointment booking and scheduling
Educating young adults on healthcare options and choices
Research + Discovery
Competitor audit
I began my research by exploring existing platforms that aimed to connect teenage students to mental and physical health care resources.
I found that most resources were either very dated and out of touch with the generation they aimed to serve, or they were specifically geared towards wellness tracking and at most provided crisis resources. There wasn’t anything out there that connected teens to everyday resources.
Student survey
I wanted to start hearing from students as soon as possible, so I began with a survey to gather information from high schoolers about their personal context.
Sample questions from student survey
Secondary
Competitor audit
HIPAA Compliance
Primary
Interviews with primary users
Student survey
User Interviews
I talked to high school students and staff at the Roosevelt School Based Clinic to deepen my understanding of their needs, their barriers and their goals.
Barriers to care for staff
Tracking down necessary forms to start/continue care
Resistance to care from parents
Barriers to care for students
Unable to access healthcare outside of their High School
Scheduling appointments
Knowing what services are available
Feature Ideation
Using the insights I gained, I came up with a set of features within the app that would address student and staff needs.
These features fit within three categories:
Facilitation Empowerment Education
Information Architecture
I mapped out the information architecture to begin to structure basic user flows that incorporated these features. This helped me gain a high level understanding of task flow.
I created a set of mid-fidelity wireframes to start to visualize key features and start gauging the usefulness of these ideas in my user interviews
Usability Testing
Feedback from usability testing helped to prioritize certain features and guide the design transition into the high fidelity prototypes.
I got positive feedback on the mood tracker but there was more enthusiasm for features that were helping connect students directly to the Clinic, so for this first iteration I decided to priorities those features.
My Solution
UI
Students wanted to better understand what services were available to them without having to physically go into the clinic. For this reason, educational features were prioritized and further build out.
This flow allows users to brows the services available within the clinic, familiarize themselves with the clinic staff, and make an appointment once they feel ready.
Clinic exploration flow
In an effort to increase engagement between students and the clinic, most of the user flows from the home screen will eventually land the user on a way to make an appointment.
Home scree (left) and appointment booking screen (right)
Next Steps
Next I plan to Complete a second round of research with key staff members at the School Based Clinic as well as usability testing with current Roosevelt students on the high fidelity prototype.
I will also look into the feasibility of integrating with NextGen - the clinics’s current electronic health records software.
Conclusion
The more initiative that students can take in their health care choices while in high school, the more likely they are to receive the care they need, the more confident they will be embracing the responsibilities of adulthood, and the easier it is for clinic staff to spend time providing care to students who need it.
Creating a platform that empowers students to do so is what I hope Health-E achieves.